Elie Autin is a Lausanne-based dancer and performer whose practice explores performance as a site of transformation and magic. For Autin, dance holds the potential to open a world where everything is possible — a space of instinct, intensity, and imagination.
Her recent work, Antichambre, functions as both performance and memorial: a commemorative temple dedicated to Bacchus, the mythological god of wine, ritual, and ecstasy. In this piece, Autin adopts a dual role as mourner and mythmaker, proclaiming herself as the “last wife of Bacchus.” Through this framing, Antichambre becomes a meditation on myth, mourning, and the paradoxical nature of desire.
The work draws heavily on the histories of the Bacchanals — gatherings known for their excess, violence, and ecstatic release. For Autin, these events are not only spectacles of abandon, but also philosophical expressions of instinct and collective catharsis. This tension is echoed in their staging, where baroque detail meets intimate symbolism: ashes, braids, fabrics, and fluids become material translations of love, grief, and memory.
In presenting Bacchus as both intimate partner and cultural figure, Autin complicates the boundary between personal narrative and mythological inheritance. Antichambre invites audiences to consider how ritual and performance can operate as spaces of remembrance and release — where violence and beauty, chaos and delicacy, collide.
